They depend on an observer to collapse the wave-function and collapsing the wave function is necessary to bring them into existence, right?

No.

I had thought the collapsing of the wave function was not physical but a little googling shows this is actually up for debate.

It helps to think about the Mrs Shrodinger problem

Mr Shrodinger is doing his usual thing with the cat. But he is in a bigger box with Mrs Shrodinger overseeing. If she doens't look inside the box then is that cat alive or dead. What difference does it make if Mr Shrodinger has opened his box and observed the cat?

Moved a crapload of posts from the moderation thread over here. Please LMK if I moved any important moderation-related posts by mistake.

LOL @ dancing around a topic for dozens of posts pretending you don't know what people are asking. The question of whether or not you believe the earth is spherical, or is flat (and I mean in the traditional sense that most people think of, where valleys and mountains don't disqualify it from being flat), is a pretty simple thing to answer: spherical, flat, or you're not sure. And if you don't want to answer the question for some reason, just say so.

Or you can just continue with your word games as you so often like to do.

If a person is reluctant to say what shape he believes the Earth is, then I think it is safe to assume that he either is trolling or does not believe the Earth is generally spherical.

You can go on about how that's an unwarranted assumption, but I doubt anyone in this thread has every met a non-troll who believes the Earth is spherical who was reluctant to say that the Earth is spherical.

He claims to have studied linguistics so at least playing word games fits that skillset. Evasive wordplay also naturally supports a conspiracy driven lifestyle choice, so there you go - wordplay is one of the few things he can skillfully utilize from Paraguant on this octagon shaped world.

Well I'm sure as **** not going to answer any and every question about what I think just to appease you and I'd tell you to **** off if you demanded that I claim that reptilians don't exist, or that the Holocaust happened, or the moon landing, or any other sort of far out conspiracy claim.

While I am happy that you are essentially saying that Lizard People exist (they have been sadly overlooked by the conspiracy addicts here) , and I am indifferent to the silly moon landing not happening belief system you have, I am not too surprised you have some repulsive views in the mix like being a Holocaust denier. Guessing when this forum was modded you had to shy away from that and other similar horrid beliefs like child crises actors in school shootings, but perhaps that will change in the future here and you can finally share all the secrets of the pentagon shaped world you have magically uncovered searching the internet from Paraguant.

All the best.

I won't deny that you're not a lying troll if someone wanted me to deny that either

I'm not telling you whether to take the Fifth. I'm just explaining the basis for everyone's adverse inference.

If you want to talk about the shape of the earth, then I'm fine talking about it. I had 82 posts in the other thread on the issue so it's certainly not a topic that I feel some need to shy away from. I specifically asked you to be more specific when you talked about observations and evidence but you declined to do so.

What shape do you think the Earth is?

What are the lines of evidence that are used to argue the various possibilities?

I'm literally just asking you what you think.

It's not really something that I've looked at much, I posted a little bit in the other thread because it was interesting but the fact that the matter only has a probability of existence sort of makes the shape of earth question moot imo, and that's what I expressed in the other thread and why I'm asking you now to be more specific in discussing arguments.

Amazing.

Not really. Go to any fringy festival where some conspiracyderps setup and you will see the exact same type of behavior and language, only in person you also get that stare into the middle distance not all quite there thing many conspiracyderps have going for them. I remember years ago a geezer talking about the Amero and every sentence was as if Lucky posted it in how he replied to simple questions, all while staring off into space somewhere.

That effortless (and too many negatives in a sentence) approach of redirection is not a big deal with harmless stuff like UFOs or moon landings, but it does not work when you avoid admitting you are a Holocaust denier, probably due to posting guidelines that were in place here for years, since you like skating around the rules in that way, with that linguistic background of yours.

Anyway, you seem to be having fun wordplaying to avoid admitting you are a flat Earther, so since that is a relatively harmeless belief (other than it being a bit of a gateway to QAnon for many) it is probably best you stick with dancing around nonsensensical conspiracies and wait for the modding rules to officially change here before you reveal the repulsive conspiracy beliefs you also have within you.

All the best.

But most of those people are quite happy to talk about their weird fringe beliefs instead of beating around the bush.

I've said I'm willing to discuss the shape of the earth but that doesn't seem to be anything you guys are interested in discussing. Instead you only want to discuss what I think about the shape of the earth as some sort of weird litmus test of sorts, and that's not a game I'm willing to play with you.

You would think so, and the ones that stand on a crate and talk to the clouds (saw a person on a stage talking to literally nobody but that did not stop him) are kind of like that because they are so lost in their world that self awareness is not even a passing thought. However, one cannot really have a conversation with that type of human as they are only ever talking to themselves in the end. That genuine all-in flat Earther poster that was mentioned yesterday (Billy?) is one of those as was the wacky QAnon poster that was here before he vanished after too many days without the Pope or Biden being arrested as he predicted.

The other ones who are self aware that their beliefs are considered nutty by "non-believers," particularly the older ones with decades of living that lifestyle, will use all the deflection/redirection/answer questions with questions/ suggest they want to talk about a topic but in their way routines that Lucky employs, and it makes sense because that is what decades of that combination of self-awareness and paranoia/conspiracy beliefs will eventually manifest as in terms of communication.

You also will meet some that have just one or two specific conspiracies they believe in, and the rest they dismiss. Those people are actually interesting to speak to as they are generally fully aware that their narrow beliefs are also a bit nutty, but they just really believe them. One I spoke to on that had a shop that sold stuff for conspiracy people, and I remember him saying at the time that the alien stuff was very popular though he did not believe in any of it, but since the alien stuff helped pay the bills - there you go, which I thought was fair enough.

I don't have any particular data on spherical planets that I want to discuss with you. I wouldn't expect to find a bunch of recent studies on the topic because it hasn't been a topic of serious debate for several hundred years.

I never said that you were reluctant to discuss the shape of the earth. To the contrary, if I were willing to do it, I have every confidence that you would engage in a 400 post granular discussion where you never state what you believe. And if I asked you how air travel times could be consistent with a non-spherical earth, I'm sure you would flip the burden and ask me to disprove the existence of a conspiracy between Big Airline and Big Cartography.

I don't even understand the air travel time question honestly so I'd be fine starting there. But yes you would necessarily need to explain the argument to me.

Hey Lucky, what shape do you think a pool ball is?

Is this a test to determine if I think spheres exist?